Bullet of Salvation: Shinji Ikari
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: Suppose Shinji entered the realm of the Empire, through the mouth of Koro, and prevented the death of Sheele? Suppose he had a weapon that only he could use? Suppose he was an Imperial Arms like no other?
1. Bullet of Salvation: Shinji Ikari

Creation began on 11-16-15

Creation ended on 11-16-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Bullet of Salvation: Shinji Ikari

A/N: I seem to be the only one taking leaps on potential crossovers that no one else seems to start up. Here goes something else because of the Twelfth Angel.

As Sheele saw the organic Imperial Arms prepare to devour her, something immediately shot out of its mouth…and slam into her, sending her crashing onto soft grass.

"Aah," she heard a male voice groan atop her body. "Sorry about that."

It was a boy, probably around the age of fourteen, dressed in a strange outfit that looked like it was made of rubber and plastic, with dark hair and brownish eyes.

"Are you alright?" He asked her.

"I think so," she responded, and rose back to her feet.

As the boy got up, both he and Sheele noticed he had an unusual weapon in his right hand. It resembled a small pistol, but was purple and green, with a Taoist symbol engraved onto both sides of its handle.

"What the heck?" The boy questioned.

BLAST! Mine, able to take advantage of the pause of the situation the boy had caused with his appearance, used Pumpkin to shoot up the organic Imperial Arms that had almost devoured Sheele, damaging it more than the previous time.

"Quick! We gotta get out of here!" She shouted, and she and Sheele, along with the boy that had appeared, fled from the battle.

-x-

"…And he just appeared out of the organic Imperial Arms?" Najenda asked, looking at the unconscious boy that may have been the very reason Sheele was still alive.

"Just as that thing was about to devour Sheele," Mine explained.

Beside the boy was Sheele herself, watching as he slept. She suspected that his arrival had left him physically exhausted, wherever he was from before he arrived.

"I found that weapon he had on him when he showed up in the book," went Akame, holding their book of the Imperial Arms that had been written about in it. "You're not going to believe this, but the boy's in it, too."

Tatsumi took a look at the book and saw the page.

"No way," he expressed, seeing the boy depicted holding the weapon in the book. "What does this mean? Is he some sort of Imperial Arms in the form of a man?"

"Or he's just the only one capable of wielding this particular Imperial Arms," went Najenda.

"It says here that it…or he…is called…the Bullet of Salvation: Shinji Ikari," Tatsumi revealed.

"Bullet of Salvation?" Bulat questioned, looking at the boy.

"Shinji Ikari?" Lubbock added in.

Sheele placed her left hand on the boy's forehead, wondering how long it would be before he awoke from his exhaustion.

To be continued…


	2. Awakening

Creation began on 11-16-15

Creation ended on 11-18-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Awakening

With some renewed strength, Shinji opened his eyes and found himself in a room that felt very girlish to him. All except for the ceiling.

"Another unfamiliar ceiling," he sighed, rising up.

"You're awake," he heard a female voice speak up.

Turning to the source, he saw a young woman that seemed to embrace the color purple a bit more than Misato's hair did, almost as similar to how Asuka embrace the color red.

"You," he uttered. "You're the girl from that night. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, thank you. My name is Sheele. What is your name?"

"Shinji. Shinji Ikari."

"The Bullet of Salvation: Shinji Ikari?"

"What? Bullet of Salvation?"

"That weapon you were holding. Your Imperial Arms."

-x-

Displayed on a small table, the gun-shaped Imperial Arms attracted the members Akame, Mine, Tatsumi and Lubbock. As far as the book confirmed, the Imperial Arms in front of them was just half of the equation. This was the Bullet of Salvation, while this Shinji Ikari was the other half of the equation. And so far, the book had detailed that the Bullet of Salvation was unusually powerful because it had been made from the leftover parts of other Danger Beasts…and something else entirely that wasn't a Danger Beast.

Its abilities lie within the limitations of being incapable of firing energy rounds that could kill, but rather cause temporary paralyzes in whoever the shooter wanted to hit. Not only was it capable of temporary paralyzes, but sleep induction that could last up to eighteen hours, hallucination induction, and some sort of Trump Card of two Trump Cards called Inner Enemy, which the book didn't detail. As far as they suspected, this Bullet of Salvation was, potentially, more powerful than Pumpkin and maybe just as powerful as Incursio.

"But it's an Imperial Arms that can't kill," went Akame. "What use is one like this?"

"It must relate to this Shinji Ikari," suggested Tatsumi. "He doesn't seem into murder, no matter who's an enemy, so this Imperial Arms just harms whoever he uses it on. Paralyzes, hallucination, sleep, methods that can cause harm in one way or another, but without killing them. Maybe it had a different intention when it was made, even."

"What, like allowing him to take other Imperial Arms without having to risk his life in combat?" Mine asked him.

"Yeah," he answered her. "Maybe that was what it was meant for. We can have him take out the enemy and relieve them of their Imperial Arms and other weapons easily."

"But that's if he's willing to help us in the revolution against the Empire," Lubbock stated.

"Maybe if Sheele asks him to join," Mine suggested.

"Sheele?" Tatsumi questioned.

"He pretty much saved her from getting killed when he showed up, and she's been keeping watch over him since we brought him back here."

-x-

"…So…you're all assassins?" Shinji asked Sheele, as she had explained what their group, Night Raid, did for a living in this Empire.

"Yeah," she answered him. "Quite unexpected, but we are trying to save the Empire from the corruption it's under."

"The current Emperor is just a kid, so he doesn't really know what's going on. Do you really have to kill him if he's kept in the dark about the corruption by these people that are exploiting him?"

"If it comes to that, we'll have to."

"You don't look like a killer. But then again, I've been deceived before."

Sheele looked at him and asked him a personal question.

"Have you been made to kill before?" She asked him.

"Just giant creatures that were attacking the human race," he revealed. "But it was my father that forced me into a life of war against creatures that were named after God's messengers. I'm not comfortable doing anything that causes me to harm people against my will."

Sheele gave him a smile. This Shinji seemed similar to Tatsumi before he joined Night Raid. But Shinji was a boy trying to hold onto his innocence and avoid harming people as much as possible.

"You hate causing pain," she realized, "and you hate being in pain."

"Must make me seem pathetic," he expressed.

"No," she responded. "I can sympathize with that feeling. To hate feeling pain…or being the cause of pain. I'm good at killing, but awful at everything else. I can't wash dishes without breaking them. I can't do laundry without shrinking or burning clothes. I can't even cook or get food without causing some sort of mishap."

"So, basically, you're just good at causing pain…but when you try to do something else, you mess up. Have you tried more than once? Maybe some guidance?"

"No. It's…safer for everyone…that I don't do any housework."

Then her glasses fell off.

Shinji picked them up and put them back on her.

"I could help you," he offered her, referring to what she was inadequate at doing. "Back home, I lived with this woman and a girl that was as violent as the monsters we faced, and I was the only one that was actually good at housework. I was declared a housebroken male."

"Around here, in the Empire, not all of the men do housework. They either hunt or work around the towns. Only the women are the homemakers."

"There's no sense of equal rights?"

"What are equal rights?"

"It's a law which permits women to serve in functions that men serve in."

"Some of the women here, like the one from the night you appeared, serve in the Empire's army. Others are part of the Revolutionary Army against the Empire's current reign."

"It's that bad in the Empire?"

"With the Prime Minister exerting his control over the Emperor to cause disorder and fear across the land, everything that has been happening is always bad. We're trying to stop this all, but it's difficult."

Shinji found himself convinced that everything that had happened around him in the last few hours was no dream. And the worst part of his being convinced was the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness…and it was the same thing near him right now: A giant pair of scissors with what looked like a cartoon panda head on the handles of them.

"I'm sorry, but those scissors," he uttered, pointing toward them.

Sheele looked at them and uttered, "My Imperial Arms. Extase."

"Extase?"

"They can cut through just about anything, including armor."

-x-

As she got her arms repaired by Dr. Stylish, Seryu swore vengeance on that mysterious boy that appeared out of Koro and deprived him of his next meal. It didn't matter if his appearance was purely coincidence or some act of God, the fact that he was there made him an enemy in her eyes. And his apology to the girl Koro was about to eat, it was enough to make her want to puke in disgust.

-x-

"Your glasses," went Akame to Sheele, seeing that her glasses had a small cord tied on the ends of their temples.

"Shinji fixed my problem," she explained the minor modification to her glasses.

They were in the kitchen, as Shinji was hungry and had explained to Sheele that before he appeared here in this world, he'd been trapped inside a large cylinder for almost sixteen hours and that he hadn't eaten anything since before that period. It surprised the ladies that Shinji was the one cooking, since it was usually a woman's duty. He demonstrated that he was quite a natural at it.

"So, Shinji," went Leone, "what are you going to do now?"

As he placed the bowls of takoyaki and teriyaki in front of each member of Night Raid, the boy that they were certain could help them take down the corrupted Empire soon sat down and sighed.

"Sheele explained to me the corruption the Empire has caused," he spoke out. "And how many people that have been hurt or worse by the government. As much as I wanted to believe that everything I've seen and heard is nothing more than some crazy dream I can't wake up from, I find that that's not going to happen at any time. And…I'm probably likely to be sought after just for being around all of you, so I can't really try and seek help from the Emperor to find a way home…if what you say about the Prime Minister is true. So…I guess my only other alternative…is to help you overthrow the Empire."

"Are you sure?" Tatsumi asked him.

Shinji looked at him…and then at Sheele.

"Yeah," he answered him. "Yeah."

-x-

Evangelion Unit-01, once the greatest of the three Evas in NERV's possession, was now reduced to scrap. Every last trace of it was reduced to something that the paramilitary agency couldn't salvage after destroying the Twelfth Angel. And the worst of it was the remnants of the Entry Plug that had been found. It and its occupant…were reduced to scorched metal and pulp without a face.

"Shinji," went Misato, devastated by the harsh reality of the boy's death. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

While the Angel had been destroyed, it had been at such a cost that there was very little hope that NERV could recover from this.

To be continued…

A/N: Here's the second chapter. What do you think of Shinji joining Night Raid?


	3. Heart of Loss

Creation began on 11-18-15

Creation ended on 11-18-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Heart of Loss

A/N: An explanation to a serious question.

As Sheele showed Shinji around the hideout, which he needed to memorize in case he was out on the field with the rest of Night Raid, Tatsumi and Akame had looked through the book of Imperial Arms further to get a better understanding of Shinji's Imperial Arms. That's when Tatsumi discovered that many of the other pages that detailed other Imperial Arms had certain words that were highlighted that seemed to go back to the Bullet of Salvation. And Akame, who was listing the highlighted words, discovered what seemed undeniably impossible and beyond what she had seen since before and after she joined Night Raid.

"It looks like this explains a darker side to the Bullet of Salvation's origins," she told Tatsumi after straightening out the highlighted words and going back to the page that had Shinji on it. "It doesn't seem like he even knows about it."

Tatsumi checked the entirety of what Akame wrote down, and half of it was something he couldn't understand fully.

"What does this mean?" He asked her. "Is he some sort of immortal?"

"I wouldn't call him immortal, but something close to it."

-x-

"You have hot springs?" Shinji asked Sheele, as she showed him where they took their baths.

"Yeah," she expressed. "Though, we use them sparingly to avoid being attacked by assailants when we're vulnerable."

Shinji dipped his left hand into the waters of the closest hot spring…and found something off. It was the fact that a hot spring was normally what it was called out for, but Shinji didn't register the temperature as hot. He registered it as being lukewarm, similar to his tea beverages.

"Are they always lukewarm?" He asked Sheele.

"No, they're never warm," she explained. "You'd have to have a tough resistance to high temperatures to endure a hot spring."

Removing his hand from the spring, Shinji expressed that he had once been almost cooked alive by a creature that looked like a giant diamond.

What neither of them ever noticed was that Shinji's wrist, for a short moment, looked red, but then returned to its original color.

-x-

"Are you certain of this?" Bulat asked Akame.

"It's the only explanation," she answered him. "He's not entirely who he seems to be."

"He's an Imperial Arms…and yet he's not?" Lubbock questioned.

"That's what makes him unlike any of the other Imperial Arms we've encountered," went Tatsumi, as the other Night Raid members (excluding Sheele) were discussing Shinji's status as an Imperial Arms. "He may be the only one of his kind."

"Well, let's hear it, then." Mine stated.

"While there were originally forty-eight Imperial Arms made under the order of the Emperor of that time, he decided to have one made that was much more extreme than they had been during their creation," Akame went. "The Emperor had his best minds experiment on a creature that wasn't a Danger Beast, called Lilith, and orihalcum and the leftovers of the Danger Beasts used to create the original Imperial Arms…and tissues from a fallen member of the human race."

"Tissues?" Leone questioned.

"Skin," Najenda answered her. "Flesh."

"It had been an experiment to try…and bring the deceased back to life," Akame explained further, "but the experiment didn't go the way it was intended. If it was Shinji that was made over one-thousand years ago, he's as well-preserved as other organic Imperial Arms, but he lacks a core like they do…because he's more alive than they appear."

"The Emperor was trying to create an Imperial Arms that used to be human?" Leone asked.

"Yes," Akame revealed, "but their experimentation with the dead was flawed from the start. They tried with several other dead people, but they discovered that they couldn't do anything with flesh that had been dead for too long. The flesh that had been used to make Shinji was dead for less than a day, so while he might have some recollection of a living person, he's not eternal."

"And that weapon of his?" Lubbock asked.

"It was designed to work with his pacifistic nature."

"Pacifistic?" Mine asked.

"A perfect weapon…for a person that lacks the will to kill," answered Tatsumi. "A weapon that can't kill…and a person that doesn't want to kill."

"So then, he's kinda like a shield," Lubbock stated. "Just one that can shoot."

"But he's also like an undead," added Leone. "A stiff that still has a pulse. I could hear his heart the second he was brought here."

"The living dead," said Najenda. "Literally."

-x-

As day became night again, Shinji found sleep to be a luxury that he was difficulty affording. In his bare room, he tossed and turned in his sleep, rotating between being awake and actually sleeping. Whenever he lost consciousness, he saw something that didn't make any sense. A giant of light that held a small, black sphere in its hands, standing on the blue sphere of Earth that suddenly turned red.

He found himself floating in the ocean of space, surrounded by nine, white harpies wielding strange spears. And leading them was Unit-01, wielding a red spear, looking ravaged and animal-like.

"Everything you try to hold dear to you, you will lose, no matter what you do," it spoke to him.

GASP! He awoke, drenched in sweat…and holding his weapon in his right hand.

He looked to the window, staring at the moonlight, calming down.

 _Sheele?_ He thought, suddenly smelling her scent as she ran down the hall.

-x-

Somehow, Night Raid's hideout was discovered by members of the Empire, and they had gotten inside the building.

SLASH! Akame had killed three masked people while running down the hall.

BLAST! Mine had blown holes through several masked men in front of her.

"How'd they find us?!" She asked Lubbock, who was tangling seven of their intruders with Cross Tail.

"Hell, if I know!" He responded, decapitating them.

Outside the hideout, Leone, Tatsumi and Bulat were fending off large, masked men that seemed to ignore the fact that they were losing their arms and legs.

-x-

Sheele, using Extase to cut the intruders down, was cornered by a larger, armored man that Extase had a difficult time cutting through, and backed into a corner. Her left cheek was bruised and the inside of her mouth was filling with blood.

"Any last words, little girl?" The man asked her, raising his giant, right hand that was covered in spikes, preparing to reduce her to pulp, regardless.

Suddenly…

"Aaaaaahh!" He found himself screaming in intense pain, like something had struck him from behind and sending a type of surge through his spine.

He turned around…and saw a young man dressed in what looked like a blue and white, skin-tight outfit, wielding a small pistol, frowning at him.

"Get away from her, you bastard," he told him, and fired at him again.

These rounds, which felt like energy, didn't damage his armor, but they definitely struck him.

"If you're trying to kill me, you're sucking at it," the giant told him.

"I don't need to kill you," the boy replied, and fired again at him.

The giant was about to stomp his way towards the boy, but found himself unable to move his feet.

"I…I can't move! I can't move!" He grunted, trying to move his arms, but they felt like stone, weighing him down.

"Can you take him, Sheele?" The boy asked.

"Sure," she answered him, and the giant felt his neck getting cut off his body. "Thank you."

While the giant's body stood where it was, Sheele moved away from the corner and to Shinji.

"Are you alright?" He asked her.

"Nothing I can't recover from," she explained.

"Somehow…I smelled you from my room…and found you here."

"But…your room is further from mine. How were you able to smell me from that far away?"

"I…I don't know how…but I just did."

Sheele could see that he was confused at how he was able to do something he wasn't sure of how he was able to do, but decided not to press him on it. Whatever it was that enabled him to find her the way he did, she was sure they would find out later.

To be continued…

A/N: Anyone interested the way this went?


	4. Fallen, but not Dead

Creation began on 11-19-15

Creation ended on

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Fallen, but not Dead

Doctor Stylish's modified soldiers were falling left and right, and the Night Raid members were proving more difficult than he had anticipated. And then, there was this boy they had just encountered, based on the description that Seryu gave him, and that strange weapon of his.

 _What the Hell is this kid?_ He wondered, seeing the kid shooting at several of what remained of his enhanced minions, causing to stand still like statues while the other assassins, particularly the woman with the large scissors, put them out of their misery. _I need to get away. We have their location. We can come back and put an end to them._

As he turned to flee, he was stopped by the presence of Leone, cracking her right hand.

"Hello," she greeted, and then took his head off faster than you could blink. "Bye."

-x-

With the last of the intruders killed, Night Raid took a breather and relaxed as the sun began to rise and signify the new day.

"Somehow, they knew where to find us," said Mine to the others.

"We have to consider this place has been compromised," added Akame.

Shinji, who would rather be looking at Sheele at the moment, couldn't take his eyes off the corpse of one of the larger men that Akame had killed…and then thrust his left hand into the back.

 _Why am I doing this?_ He wondered, catching the attention of Sheele and Leone.

"Shinji, what are you doing?" Sheele asked him, and he ripped out something from the corpse.

Gripped in his hand was some sort of object that wasn't an organ you would find in the body. It resembled a five-pointed star with a ruby-colored scheme, a silver ring surrounding its form, and an emerald eye in its center. And somehow, Shinji just felt that he had seen this relic before, but he could've sworn that he had never seen in his life.

"What is that?" Leone asked him, and he held it out in front of her.

"Something I shouldn't have seen before," he told her, "but I have seen it before. Eternity Prowl: Hunter. An Imperial Arms…designed to track down Imperial Arms."

"Wicked."

Shinji gave it to her and then walked away, unable to look away from his bloody hand.

 _How was that even possible?_ He wondered some more. _How did I know it was even inside that corpse? How did I know where it was inside it?_

Sheele could see the look of concern on Shinji's face and saw that he was unsure of what had happened just now. But then, she saw him look at several other corpses around them.

"There are eight more of them," he uttered out.

"What do you mean?" Tatsumi asked him.

"Imperial Arms," he clarified, pointing to the corpses. "They're inside the bodies."

"What?!" Lubbock gasped. "How can you know this?!"

 _I wish I knew how to answer that,_ Shinji thought.

-x-

It had been nearly two weeks since the Twelfth Angel incident, and Gendo was short a pilot. While Unit-01 could be rebuilt from the remains (with its organic mass replaced with the mass from Lilith), its lack of a adequate pilot would hinder him from fulfilling his scenario. It would be at least a month before the scientists could produce an adequate copy of the Third Child from his remains, but without a soul, there would be no way of synchronization with the soul in Unit-01. By then, it was likely the majority of NERV would have moved on and prepared for the arrival of the Thirteenth Angel.

-x-

"…I can't believe they had nine of these," Najenda expressed, looking at the display of Imperial Arms picked up off the corpses, "and that Shinji somehow knew that they were with them."

"This one was the one they used to find us," Lubbock explained, picking up the Eternity Prowl: Hunter.

In addition to the Glorious Hands of God: Perfector, there the Double Bladed Axe: Belvaac, Blood Collection: Absordex, Military Music Dream: Scream and Purgatory's Invitation: Rubicante among the ones they found. With these in the Revolutionary Army's possession, their chances of overthrowing the Empire's corrupt reign seemed to increase dramatically because of Shinji.

They would have to get these to their superiors within the army, but first they needed to relocate to a safer locale. Grabbing what they could carry, they quickly vacated the hideout. Though Shinji, who didn't have anything except the spare clothes Tatsumi had until he could acquire ones that were more suited to his likes, was still in a mild state of confusion at how he was able to know that those that had been killed had these Imperial Arms in their possession. And his hand, while cleaned of blood, was something he didn't take his eyes off of.

This wasn't unknown by Sheele, who put a comforting arm on his right shoulder…and gave a comforting smile to him.

He tried to give one back, but he was weighed down by the events of the previous night.

Suddenly, he stopped…and fell to the ground.

"Shinji!" Sheele gasped.

-x-

"Where am I?" Shinji wondered aloud, finding himself in the ocean of space again, surrounded by the white harpies again. "Oh, no."

Behind the harpies was the ravaged Unit-01, looking more ravaged than the previous time.

"They will try to recall you to their cause," the Eva uttered, "but do you want to go back to that life?"

"What are you talking about?" Shinji asked back.

"In the life you were taken from…you don't make it," the Eva answered him. "You died. They will try to bring you back in a false body made from your remains. But do you want to return to that life, knowing where it will lead you?"

"Where would it lead me?"

"Despair. Emptiness. Loneliness. Some view a second chance at life as an opportunity to change fate, but a second chance for you in the life you lost wouldn't amount to anything."

"Why?"

"Because everything you try to hold dear to your heart will be taken from you. You can't protect anyone or anything in that life that revolves around the behemoths that pervert creation and bring death and destruction to the world. You'll just be alone, without so much as one friend. And somehow, I don't think she could take it if you were to just leave as quickly as you appeared, especially when you saved her life from that creature that was about to consume her."

"What? You mean, Sheele?"

"Not as confused as some would believe you to be. Yes, the woman whose life you saved. She does owe you what some would refer to as a life debt. Maybe you should stay with her and the assassins she works with and call it even."

"If I'm dead in my old life, why should I go back to it?"

"They would make you a false body from your remains and then attempt to retrieve your soul. Still, the question is whether or not you want to return to that life."

"And how do I know you're not lying to me?"

"I can be many things, young man. I can be cruel, I can be unjust, but what I can't be is a liar. You died in that life relating to the Eva. This life that relates to your status as a living talisman of power with free will is your other choice if you refuse to go back to the other life. And that girl has it in for your affection after you offered her help in advancing her lack of other skills."

"She has been honest with me and hasn't lied to me…yet."

"What makes you think she will lie to you?"

"Nothing."

A silence between them spanned for at least a full minute or so…until the Eva spoke up again.

"What is your decision?" It asked him.

"Is there a right or wrong answer to the question?" He asked back.

"Whichever choice you make is the one that you must make. Nobody's going to make the choice for you. There's hardly such a thing as a right or wrong answer when faced with such choices."

-x-

Opening his eyes, Shinji found himself against a tree, near a stream, where the other members of Night Raid were.

"How long was I out?" He uttered out.

"Almost five hours," he heard Akame say, and he turned to face her, seeing that she and Sheele were sitting on large rocks, watching over him.

"Are you alright now?" Sheele asked him.

"Yeah, thanks." He answered her.

"You don't seem alright," Akame told him. "You look distressed."

"And I suppose my face gives that away easily?"

"Yes, it does."

"That's what happens when your past life tries to haunt you."

-x-

"…Even if Unit-01 is repaired, it's not like anyone can pilot it," went Misato to Ritsuko, though it was in a tone to let the faux-blond know that she wouldn't forgive her for causing the death of Shinji.

In front of them, just outside the small room, was the damaged Unit-01 undergoing repairs. While the purple behemoth was proven to be within salvageable parameters, its lack of a pilot was another story.

"We're likely to resolve that matter in due time," Ritsuko informed her.

"And what of Unit-03's transport?"

"It should arrive the day after tomorrow."

"And who's going to pilot it?"

Ritsuko was unable to answer that question.

-x-

"So, every time you lost consciousness, you kept meeting with this creature that informed you that these people from this other world you once resided in would try to bring you back?" Sheele asked Shinji, shortly after they and the rest of Night Raid had relocated to their new hideout (which, to both Shinji and Tatsumi's surprise, resembled the old hideout).

"Yeah, that's about it," he explained to her. "It told me I had a choice on whether or not to return to that life. To either be here…or go back."

"And…what did you choose?"

He sat in a chair by the window of the room Sheele claimed as her own and expressed, "I died in that life. Even if I could return, I wouldn't be the same, anymore. I'd just be in false body made from the remains of my original body. I wouldn't be the same person at all. So…I told the creature I would stay here, in this life I had."

"You chose this life over the previous one?"

"It wasn't really much of a life."

"How could your previous life be awful?"

Shinji sighed and expressed all the things that made his life that related to the Eva less than a life and more of a curse or obligation. He told Sheele about Misato, about Ayanami, Asuka, his father, the Eva, the Angels, everything he knew. The bossy, atrocious personality of the pilot of Unit-02, the rather-detached personality of the pilot of Unit-00, the massive alcoholism of his guardian. As much as he wanted to bury even the oldest of memories that caused him pain, Shinji practically bared his soul out to Sheele…and the strangest thing of it was that he had no idea why he wanted her to know all there was to know about his past.

Sheele listened and understood more about him than anyone else probably would. She learned that he had been estranged from his father, who seemed to be a very, very uncaring man, and only recently came back into his life…just to use his own son as a soldier in a war he didn't fully understand. A girl with red hair that seemed to know nothing but violence and how to hurt those around her. A girl with blue hair that spoke with a detached nature. Even a woman that had purple hair like hers, but was older and had a drinking problem.

In a way, Shinji seemed to have just as similar problems as anyone else that joined the Revolutionary Army and Night Raid did, except his stemmed from being from another world where there was no monarchy of any sort.

"…So, that's why I don't want to go back to that life, even if I could," Shinji expressed. "If it's between this life and that life… I can't see this life being any worse than the other one had been."

-x-

With no report or sign of Dr. Stylish's group after he had gone on a mission to take out Night Raid, Esdeath decided to assemble her own group to eliminate the group of assassins. One thing that might've explained Stylish's lack of progress was this person that Seryu had spoken of, a boy that emerged from her Imperial Arms and ended the battle when they might've managed to obtain Extase. Whoever this boy was that Seryu saw, Esdeath was certain of one thing: He had to be affiliated with Night Raid now and was helping them. But there was one thing she wanted to do before facing off against them, and that was to see this boy, whoever he was.

 _A boy that just so happens to emerge from an Imperial Arms,_ she thought, standing under the shower head in her bathroom. _What an unusual happening. I would like so much to meet him._

-x-

Even though he could still fit in the plugsuit and that it had no rips or any other sort of damage to it, Shinji refused out of wanting to wear regular clothing (and because the plugsuit, despite having been washed, still reeked of LCL, which, in his mind, smelled like blood, a scent that he couldn't stand smelling whenever he was inside the Entry Plug of Unit-01). While the clothes he was given by Tatsumi were, more or less, hand-me-downs along with old pieces of armor that Najenda gave him, Shinji knew they were better than nothing, and he couldn't ask Leone, Akame or Mine for any spare clothing. Just from sight alone, he suspected that Leone was probably a bit of an exhibitionist or a woman that enjoyed showing off as much of herself as possible, Mine had an affinity for pink, and Akame's attire just reminded him of the school uniform of his female classmates, only dark and less covering on the limbs. If he had a shirt like Tatsumi's they'd probably pass for brothers, but the blue and short-sleeved assemble was enough for Shinji, as it gave him more freedom of movement. And a pair of old gauntlets and a holster for his Imperial Arms pretty much completed the current attire.

"Fallen, but not dead," he told himself, examining his appearance in a mirror. "I fell from the would-be grace of a previous life in one world…but wind up in another world where my life is…less than one of mortality (he looks down at his left hand). But what is this life, exactly? Am I alive or am I not?"

All he really knew was that he was here, and he had no intention of returning to a life relating to Eva. Not when it meant being shackled inside a mockery of a body copied from his remains. He was one of the fallen…but he was far from dead. His heart still beat, but his soul was looking elsewhere, away from hands that had to face unfamiliar creatures he was told were out to destroy the human race to unfamiliar faces that were just using relics from centuries ago to decide an entire country's future, to either free it from its corruption…or fall victim to it. And he didn't want to live in a society where its corruption was a common happening.

-x-

"…The cloned body's still developing its vital organs, but the brain and nervous are fully formed," Ritsuko informed Gendo, showing him the cloned body of the Third Child. "We're ready to begin the experiment."

"Proceed," he ordered.

To be continued…

A/N: Impressed? I didn't think it was a good idea to give Shinji the strange ability to to detect Imperial Arms and know what they were, but it looked like it worked out well.


	5. Dead, but not Gone

Creation began on 12-09-15

Creation ended on 01-21-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Dead, but not Gone

Failure. That was how the experiment to create a clone of the Third Child had ended up. A complete failure. The clone simply didn't have the same capacity to endure as a natural body could. And there was something else, as well.

" _No human being may ever touch the souls of the dead and displaced,"_ the dying clone had said before decomposing. _"The dead can't be convinced to return to life and the displaced will not return to a heartless life."_

This left Gendo wondering how far the next experiment could before a similar outcome could occur…or until NERV got the expected results.

 _No human being may ever touch the souls of the dead and displaced, huh?_ He thought, as a mere warning has never stopped him from trying to do so before.

-x-

"…If Dr. Stylish and his group were disposed of by Night Raid, then it's only because of that boy that appeared out of Koro's mouth," went Seryu to Esdeath, deciding that enough time had been wasted waiting for Night Raid. "We need to take the justice to them!"

With Esdeath's group, the Jaegers, assembled, the woman agreed with Seryu and gathered the team together and headed out to find Night Raid.

-x-

Even though it was unintentional, Tatsumi had severed off Shinji's left arm during practice swordplay. And Shinji displayed another ability that was similar to an organic Imperial Arms; he possessed the power of regeneration, able to grow back or even reattach the lost or damaged portions of his body. This was something he was surprised about, as were the other members of Night Raid. The one thing Shinji did find to be as intentional as the attempts on Night Raid's lives was what Akame did to see how power his regeneration was.

She slashed at his back with her sword, trying to see if Murasame could work on him.

Shinji turned to face her and asked, "Was that really necessary?"

The cut on his back regenerated and he exhibited no signs of the sword's poisonous nature.

"It would seem that Murasame in ineffective against you," she expressed.

Shinji clenched and unclenched his right hand just above his Bullet of Salvation, but refrained from using it.

"Please, don't do that again," he told her, calming down.

From a distance, Sheele had seen Akame use her sword on Shinji and discover that it couldn't kill him; it seemed that Shinji was, unintentionally, quite an Imperial Arms that sparked Night Raid's curiosity. She had her doubts that her Extase could even hurt him, not that she was willing to try and hurt him; she respected him and he saw in her potential to be more than just an assassin of Night Raid.

Najenda, on the other hand, wondered how powerful Shinji was when compared to one other Imperial Arms that was organic like him, but wasn't made using human tissue.

-x-

"Oh, I'm looking forward to meeting Akame again after all these years," said a young girl dressed in a black dress that seemed like a schoolgirl's uniform, bearing a similar appearance to the swordswoman of Night Raid. "It'll be just like old times."

Esdeath's group, the Jaegers, was comprised of Kurome, the wielder of March of the Dead: Yatsufusa, Wave, wielder of Carnage Incarnate: Grand Chariot, Run, the wielder of Thousand-Mile Flight: Mastema, Seryu Ubiquitous, the keeper of Magical Beast Transformation: Hekatonkheires (better known as Koro), and Bols, who wielded the Inferno Royale: Raze. They had their orders: Eliminate Night, but try to capture the boy that Seryu saw. The reason behind the secondary order was a personal one: Esdeath wanted to see him and know what he was capable of if he was able to emerge from Koro's body when others had been incapable of escaping his digestive track. If he was able to survive an encounter with such an Imperial Arms, then maybe he was the type of man she'd been looking for.

"What if we can't capture the boy that emerged from Koro?" Wave asked Esdeath, which caused Seryu to frown at the secondary order. "What if…he demonstrates persistence?"

"If that becomes the case, I shall deal with him myself," Esdeath answered him.

 _Not if I take him out first for the sake of justice,_ Seryu decided; she was going to eliminate the boy if it was the last thing she would die.

-x-

"…It looked he had the same threads as the ones used by Lubbock's Imperial Arms," Akame explained to Najenda and Bulat later that day. "They shot out of his body and connected with his severed arm, pulling it up and reattaching it back to the rest of his body."

"He has Cross Tail's threads in him?" Lubbock asked them.

"Well, the book does state that Shinji was made with the leftovers of the Danger Beasts used to make the original Imperial Arms," said Mine, "so he may have similar abilities as any of ours."

"The only question now is…just how many Danger Beasts leftovers were there when the Imperial Arms were finished…and what leftovers were used in his creation?" Bulat told them.

"Based only on the pages highlighted in the book, Shinji's body might've had nearly every leftover portion of a Danger Beast included in its design," Tatsumi suggested, examining the book further. "Cross Tail, Lionelle, Incursio, Extase, Murasame, it seems like a lot of Danger Beasts weren't entirely used when the Imperial Arms were made, so most, if not all, of the leftovers were used for him instead of being thrown away."

"It sounds like he got the lesser pieces of every Danger Beast," Leone expressed her opinion.

"The only way we'll know for sure what was used in his creation…is to see what he's capable of ourselves," said Najenda to them.

-x-

Three more times attempted at creating a replica of the Third Child to pilot Unit-01. And three more times ended in failure, with the same outcome.

"I don't understand why we keep getting nowhere with this," said Ritsuko to Gendo in his office. "The cloned bodies all said the same thing before dying, that no human being may touch the souls of the dead and displaced. This seems to imply that the Third Child cannot be cloned or replaced like the First Child can."

But Gendo still wasn't convinced on that. So long as they still had the remains of the original body, they still had access to the Third Child's DNA, and could continue cloning bodies until they made a viable replica that could serve NERV's needs. So long as they could continue cloning the boy, he felt they would get closer to what was desired.

"Continue the experiment," he ordered Ritsuko. "Use the same methods used for the First Child if it becomes necessary."

Ritsuko nodded and walked away. She had a bad feeling that the one idea she had that would result in a viable copy of the Third Child would result in consequences nowhere near the ones they already had to expect from dealing with the Angels.

-x-

SWAT! Shinji dodged an arrow-like construct made from Lubbock's Cross Tail threads, letting it the tree he hid behind.

Then suddenly, the threads disentangled from the tree…and were absorbed into Shinji's back.

"What the…" He gasped, but had no time to finish when he saw the Incursio-clad Bulat coming at him from the air. "Oh!"

He was able to leap out of the way of the adversary, just dodging his pole-arm as it smashed the tree to bits. He rolled back onto his feet and ran through the forest.

 _This is crazy!_ Shinji thought, suddenly hearing the heartbeat of someone approaching him from close by. _Who could it be?_

SLASH! He was scratched on his right shoulder by Leone, who came at him from the right side of the forest path he was on, and he felt like his arm was turned to jelly.

"I was aiming for your neck, you know," Leone told him.

The only thing about this that seemed cruel was the fact that Najenda approved of this as a training exercise to see how good Shinji was. She had claimed that, personality-wise, the boy wasn't all that different from Tatsumi, but that was mainly because he lacked the will to do whatever was necessary to see to it that an objective was done. His objective in this exercise was simple: Survive on the forest path until he made it to the river where Sheele was waiting for him. The only problem was that in order to achieve that objective, he would have to contend with Lubbock, Bulat, Leone, Mine and Akame, who were instructed to try and stop him from reaching the river.

"Whoa!" He gasped again, jumping up and grabbing onto a tree branch, evading a beam of energy that just appeared on the path leading from the river. "I guess Mine has no problem with trying to fry me, either."

"It's a training exercise, Shinji," he turned and saw Akame standing on the branch beside him. "Eventually, anyone can be capable of something they don't think is possible."

He saw her sword and had to ask a question.

"If I were to let go of the branch and fall to the ground, are you still going to try and cut me with that?" He asked her, and her face remained neutral. "You can be honest."

"It's a training exercise, Shinji," she responded. "It wouldn't be right if I didn't at least try to cut you with Murasame."

"I thought so," he told her, and let go of the branch, falling to the ground.

Akame jumped off the branch to strike him before he could hit the ground. She prepared her sword, but Shinji had taken out his Imperial Arms, Bullet of Salvation, and opened fire on her.

"Gaaurgh!" She groaned, feeling paralyzed.

Shinji reached the ground and then caught Akame, keeping her from falling on her head.

"Sorry, you should be fine after a short while," he apologized.

"You still need to make it to the river," she reminded him.

As soon as he resumed his journey to the river, Akame felt her paralyzes fading.

"He avoided you, too?" She heard Lubbock ask her as he ran over.

"He's good at evasion, but he's still defensive," added Leone as she showed up with Bulat. "And didn't your Cross Tail's threads get absorbed by him?"

"I think even he was surprised at this."

Blast! Blast! They heard the firing of Pumpkin as Mine tried to stop Shinji from reaching the river. Blast! Blast!

"Sounds like Mine's having fun," Bulat expressed.

"She won't stop him," Akame told them.

Suddenly, the firing stopped.

-x-

Mine couldn't believe this! She was the best sniper around, and she couldn't nail Shinji, who ran as fast as Leone could, like he was untouchable in this way. No matter how many times she tried to get him in her sights and pull the trigger, he just moved out of the way and got closer to the end of the forest path.

"I take it we'll be seeing Shinji soon?" Sheele asked her.

"Not if I can stop him," Mine retorted, and got up with her Imperial Arms. "I'm taking him out!"

Through her scope, she saw Shinji, but what she didn't expect to see was his eyes glowing red. She saw him raise his Bullet of Salvation up, aimed right at her, and he fired.

"Whoa!" She shouted, seeing the tiny burst of energy approaching her.

Before she could even dodge, she was struck in her waist and fell back to the ground, asleep.

Sheele looked at the forest path and saw Shinji running like Hell was behind him.

"Rah!" He panted, stopping in front of her. "I…made…it."

As he looked down and with his palms on his knees to catch his breath, he failed to see Sheele remove from behind her back a knife; while the objective to reach her was Shinji's, Sheele's objective was to teach Shinji to expect the unexpected from even an ally.

"I'm sorry this had to happen, Shinji," she apologized, and brought the knife down on his back.

Grip! Her right arm was grabbed…by Shinji!

Somehow, Shinji had heard the knife in her hand and stopped her before she could hurt him.

"Nice try, Sheele," he told her, and relieved her of the knife.

Clap, clap, clap! They turned to a bush and saw Najenda sitting on a rock, applauding Shinji for getting here.

"You managed to avoid each and every one of them," she uttered, "even Sheele's surprise attack, something I didn't expect you to avoid, and she's the only person whose orders were different from the others' orders."

Suddenly, Shinji got a whiff of something in the air that he didn't like. It smelled like…scorched blood and metal.

"Shinji?" Sheele asked him.

"Something's coming," he uttered.

To be continued…

A/N: Just so that everyone's aware, the Imperial Arms I gave Bols is a smaller, streamlined version of the one he initially had in the canon series. Raze may be a surprising blast when you see the next chapter. Peace.


	6. Invasive Defensive

Creation began on 01-21-16

Creation ended on 02-24-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Invasive Defensive

A/N: I think Shinji's new battlefield is about to get steamy.

It all happened so fast after Shinji smelled the charred remains of the three dead bodies on the ground. None of Night Raid ever suspected this to happen today. Or that it was caused by a group that had been assembled with the sole purpose of eliminating them.

"Akame, it's been a long time!" The girl that bore a resemblance to Akame cheered, which caused Shinji to be suspicious of her.

"I take it you know this girl?" He asked Akame.

"It's ancient history," she told him.

"Aw, I'm deeply offended," the girl expressed. "Don't be shy, Akame. Introduce us! Introduce him to your little sister!"

 _Sister?!_ Shinji thought, now seeing why the resemblance seemed so uncanny.

As he reached for his Bullet of Salvation, Esdeath, from a relative distance, took notice of the boy and questioned Seryu about him.

"Seryu," she stated, "is this the boy you saw emerge from your Imperial Arms?"

"Yeah, that's him!" Seryu explained, wanting to have Koro devour him.

Run, from the safety of the air, watched as Shinji opened fire on Bols, who tried to set fire to the boy and the girl with Lionelle.

"A flamethrower?!" Shinji gasped, which explained why the bodies they found were charred beyond recognition. "You burned those people?!"

"It was nothing personal, kid," went Bols, aiming Raze at him. "They were a lure to draw you out."

Shinji didn't like this guy, and fired at him with the intent to paralyze him and the other members of this group that were tasked with eliminating Night Raid. If they were intent on killing them, he had to ensure their survival through his Bullet of Salvation, which, while incapable of murder, was capable disabling these people.

-x-

Seventeen times. Seventeen attempts to clone the Third Child's body to serve NERV's purposes, but each try ending in failure. This left Ritsuko wondering just how much trying to play God with the human body and pervert creation would get her when compared to the success and failure of creating an Evangelion that actually worked. If the boy was anything similar to the failed versions of Unit-00, then the faux-blond scientist felt like she had her work cut out for her.

 _I don't understand why we keep failing,_ she wondered. _Everything is no different from the First Child, so, while similar, he should be a viable alternative to the original subject._

In front of her in the chamber where Rei Ayanami was used to create the Dummy System, another clone body of Shinji was inside the tube, immersed in an LCL solution with brain-monitoring pads stuck to his forehead to try and monitor brain activity. But like the previous clones, this one was not as active as to avoid an eighteenth failure. His primitive brain functions were active, but as far as the rest of his nervous system was, he might as well as have been on life support until something else killed him, resulting in another failure.

 _I guess there's only one other recourse to try,_ she thought, typing in several command codes on her console. _If this doesn't work, nothing will._

-x-

Clash! The Incursio-clad Bulat blocked another assault on himself by Wave with his pole-arm.

Slash! Akame tried once more to cut through his Grand Chariot armor, but her sword couldn't get through to his flesh.

Also, because her sister got in her way again with one of her soulless minions she brought with her.

Clash! Their swords blocked each other from landing any fatal blows upon one another.

"Oh, isn't this exciting?!" Kurome asked her. "So, what's with that boy we've been hearing about from Seryu? He seems impressive."

"I'm sure he's not interested in getting to know you, Kurome," Akame told her, and pushed her back.

Meanwhile, Bols and Run coordinated their attacks on Shinji and Sheele, who were on the defensive from their flamethrower and feather blades, using Extase as a shield and Bullet of Salvation as their offense against them.

Bang, bang! Shinji fired at Bols, but wasn't able to hit him with the intention of paralyzing him. Nor could he hit Run because of his winged Imperial Arms giving him greater maneuverability.

"It's no use, Sheele," he told her as they managed to avoid being burned again by Bols' Raze. "I can't get a good shot at either of them without getting burned or while being grounded."

"Stay back, Tatsumi!" They heard Akame yell at the young swordsman, who was trying to help her against Kurome.

Blast! Mine and Lubbock had great difficulty facing off against Seryu and Koro, who kept regenerating from Pumpkin's energy hits and Cross Tail's thread manipulations.

Slice! Lubbock tried cutting Koro in half, but the beast quickly recovered from that assault and was good as new.

Seryu, armed with a pair of arms that doubled as cannons, opened fire upon the two, but was infuriated by having her attacks blocked by small walls of thread.

"Haurgh!" Leone grunted, unable to land any of her jabs, kicks or punches at Esdeath, who merely dodged her attacks and fought back with her sword and small shards of ice that seemed to come out nowhere. "Urgh!"

Jab! Esdeath thrust her sword into Leone's stomach and threw her aside.

"Leone!" Tatsumi yelled.

Shinji saw this and tried to shoot at Esdeath, but the flames of Bols blocked him.

"Aaaugh…" Leone grunted softly; the regenerative powers of her Imperial Arms saved her from a fatal stabbing, but she was vulnerable to any upcoming attacks until she recovered within the next few minutes or so. "Dammit."

Shinji took a chance and ran out from behind Extase and towards Leone, rotating his shooting at Run, Bols and Esdeath. He didn't care which one he hit, so long as he made it to Leone.

But Esdeath, almost as fast as lightning, appeared in front of the boy.

"Hello there," she greeted, and then raised her sword up.

"Oh!" Shinji gasped and quickly jumped out of the way of her thrusting sword, aiming his gun down at her and pulled the trigger.

Sting! Esdeath was struck in the right shoulder, but it appeared as though she wasn't affected by his attempt to disable her.

"Ha!" She grunted, forming shards of ice in the air in between them, and hurling them at Shinji.

Slash! Slash! Slash! The ice shards cut through Shinji's arms and legs like knives!

"Aaaurgh!" He gasped, already on the mend as the cuts started closing as quickly as they were made.

While still in the air, he tried to at least shoot at Bols, who was getting closer to Sheele, who was unable to fight back with Extase.

Blast! He fired and saw his right hand get cut off by an ice shard.

"Urgh!" Bols was hit in the head and fell to the ground, giving Sheele an opportunity to either attack him or run to safety.

She chose the former over the latter option. If she killed him, they would be short another enemy…and stronger with another Imperial Arms.

Bols, paralyzed, could only watch as the scissor-wielding woman approached him.

Bash! Her Extase was blocked from ending his life by the feather blades of Run, who soared down and grabbed her, taking her up into the air.

-x-

"Explain this to me, Dr. Akagi," Gendo demanded, seeing an albino boy that was far different from the previous albino versions of the Third Child.

"This was the only solution that works so far, sir," Ritsuko explained. "Creating an exact copy of the Third Child continued to result in failure, so I chose an alternative course to cloning his body. I used the DNA of three different people in addition to the original DNA sample as the foundation and created a crossbreed clone of the Third Child. So far, he's stable."

"You amalgamated the Third Child's DNA with the DNA of three other people?" Gendo questioned.

"Mostly from three blood donors that left the city a month ago. Beyond that, he should be able to pilot the Eva."

The new version of the Third Child replicant had reddish-gray hair and hazel-colored eyes to go with his paler skin tone. In fact, his skin seemed so pale, you could almost see the veins underneath it. Another unusual feature that stood out was a strange mark that appeared on his bare chest. To Gendo, it looked like a "Y", but with strange crescents on the top edges and smaller crescents near the bottom.

"What is this marking on his chest?" He asked her.

"One of the blood donors had a birthmark that looked exactly like that one. His body just inherited a trait that's not his." She answered.

-x-

"…Shinji…" He heard his name being called out as he slowly got back up after hitting the ground, but the voices were distorted, fading in and out of his hearing. "Shinji… Shinji!"

As he shook off the disorientation, he heard someone screaming at him, and looked up at the sky, seeing a large spear of ice falling from it.

"Shinji, save Sheele!" He heard Tatsumi yell at him.

"Aaahh!" He got up and dodged the spear, performing three backflips until he was a safe distance.

Looking around, he saw Sheele in the arms of Run, which didn't sit well for him.

"You're going down, you little bastard!" He heard and saw Seryu, armed with a giant mace on her right arm and a large blade on her left arm, running towards him.

His Bullet of Salvation laying several inches from him on the ground, but he didn't reach out for it. No, he did something different: He ran towards Seryu, seeing Extase on the ground in between them, and grabbed that.

"Grrrruuargh!" He growled, swinging Extase with such force that he created a blade of air that slowed down Seryu's charge, and then he sliced through her blade and mace, destroying them, followed by a head-butt blow to her nose and mouth, sending her flying backwards at Bols, who just happened to be there for her to crash into.

"Whoa!" Najenda, who had to stay out of the entire battle after Esdeath destroyed her prosthetic arm, gasped at what Shinji had done. "Incredible."

It wasn't that he knocked back Seryu and Bols that left her fascinated. It was the fact that he did so with an Imperial Arms that he, even as a former human, shouldn't have been able to use unless he had displayed some interest or compatibility with it. And that he already had one in his possession; no one should have been able to wield more than one…but he did.

Panting for a short moment, Shinji, never expecting Sheele's weapon to be heavy like a sledgehammer, ran over to the fallen pair…and relieved Bols of his Imperial Arms.

"Hey!" Bols uttered.

Punch! Shinji punched his lights out.

Then, using Raze, he propelled himself into the air.

"Impossible!" Run gasped; he knew well enough that nobody could wield three Imperial Arms at once. "Who is this guy?!"

"He's with Night Raid," said Sheele, who was just as impressed.

He attempted to fly away, but Shinji flew faster than he could with Mastema, hovering in front of them. He was intimidated by the look of rage on Shinji's face.

"Hand Sheele over," he demanded, "and you can walk away from this."

Even without a gun, a giant pair of scissors and a flamethrower meant that Shinji clearly had the upper hand, and Run knew that he was no match against either at the same time. But that didn't mean that he couldn't try something different against the boy.

"You want her?" He asked, loosening his hold on Sheele. "She's all yours."

"Aah!" Sheele gasped, being released by him.

He dropped her in midair, surprising Shinji!

"No!" He shouted, propelling himself downward towards Sheele, intent on saving her.

"Aaaahh!" Sheele yelled as she fell closer to the ground.

-x-

"…Why must you continue to strive for what is beyond your reach?" The cloned, crossbred body of the deceased Third Child asked Gendo and Ritsuko, conscious of his current environment and the two people present. "You were told many times that no one is permitted to touch the souls of the dead and displaced. He is out of your reach…and no matter how hard you try, you can't rectify what you decided. You can't…wash your hands of the blood you spilled."

Strapped to a medical gurney, he was looked down at by the two.

"Do you know who you are?" Gendo asked him.

"I am… I am nobody," he answered him. "What is a name to what isn't even human?"

"It's a crude effort, but he can be improved upon, sir," Ritsuko informed Gendo. "The body is still stable, so he can pilot the Eva."

"And do something about his personality…or lack of a personality," he told her.

-x-

Although Seryu was unconscious, Koro still functioned, and watched with emotionless eyes and an open mouth as Sheele fell further down while Shinji fell after her.

Run, taking advantage of the situation, hurled feather blades at Shinji's back, but all they struck was the flamethrower tank of Raze, which the blades merely bounced off of. But he persevered and flung more feather blades at him, managing to get three of them in the back of his head.

"Aaaaurgh!" Shinji groaned, turning around and firing the flamethrower at the winged enemy, hitting his left leg.

"Urgh!" Run gasped, and started feeling like his leg was singed…and feeling like it was spreading to his waist.

"Sheele!" Shinji yelled down to the purple-haired woman, whom he reached for with his right hand.

"Aaurgh!" Sheele grunted as she reached for him.

Time froze around them as they neared the ground below. The purple-haired woman must have been less than one-hundred feet from what could kill a person if impacted upon with enough force. And the former mortal-turned-Imperial Arms was less than three feet away from saving her. Only a heartbeat could be heard.

Bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump…bump-bump…

Shinji got closer…and grabbed her left wrist, fired the flamethrower and slowed their fall with a pillar of great fire.

"He did it!" Mine and Leone cheered.

Landing on the ground, Shinji and Sheele got their bearings and the boy gave the woman back her scissors so he could use the flamethrower and retrieve his pistol.

"Let's end this," Shinji declared, looking at Koro.

-x-

Esdeath was left remarkably impressed by this boy's abilities. To use two Imperial Arms at once…and all to save a girl's life. She wanted him for herself now.

SLASH! She saw the girl with the scissors cut Koro's left arm off.

BANG! The boy had shot Koro's head after getting his gun back into his possession, leaving no signs of injury on its body.

The monstrous Imperial Arms then fell to its knees and reverted back to its smaller form, looking dazed and demented.

"No, Koro!" Seryu yelled.

Shinji approached Koro and then forced his left hand into the dog-like creature and ripped out its core.

"If it doesn't have its core, it can't do anything until it regenerates," he uttered, and then placed the core in his shirt; he wasn't going to risk this creature trying to devour any of Night Raid while he had anything to say or do about it.

Pierce! Shinji felt something penetrate him in the back.

"Aah! Shinji!" Sheele gasped, seeing the ice shard stuck in Shinji's back.

Falling to his knees, the boy felt like much of his energy had been drained from his body as Sheele tried to help him back up. He felt someone approaching them and knew they weren't a friend.

"Take the flamethrower and get outta here, Sheele," he told her; so long as the Revolutionary Army had access to more Imperial Arms, he felt that his life was meaningless if he became a liability.

Smack! Sheele was knocked away by none other than Esdeath, giving her space to chat with Shinji.

"You're such a fascinating man," she spoke to him, grabbing him by his neck and lifting him off his feet. "Who are you…and how are you able to use two Imperial Arms?"

It wasn't like Shinji could answer her in his current predicament. He was being grabbed by his neck and held up in the air by a woman that was clearly dangerous. There was this power, this presence of strength that didn't seem to be emanating from her sword, but from her.

"I'm nobody," he told her. "I'm just a guy that has no place to call home…and no drive to cause any deaths in a world where it's kill or be killed. Who are you…and why are you doing this when there are other ways to deal with conflicts that don't require killing?"

"A nobody with a measure of power that nobody else seems to have. I am Esdeath of the Jaegers. If you're in league with Night Raid and the Revolutionary Army, then you're an enemy to the Empire and its people. Yet, you have power, which makes you strong…or at least have a potential capacity to become strong."

It was the cold look of her eyes that had Shinji bothered. There was no feeling of sympathy, no appreciation for the lesser people, absolutely no toleration for anyone with flaws or weaknesses. This made Shinji feel like he was looking at a person that was an amalgamation of select individuals he knew from his life as an Evangelion pilot; mainly his father, Ayanami, Asuka and Misato.

Esdeath was attractive like all three women (mostly Misato because of her bust), but her pale features were like Ayanami's, indicating that she was either an albino or merely grew up in a cold environment with insufficient sunlight, had an aggressive temperament like Asuka and wouldn't tolerate anything but success, and had a do-whatever-it-takes-to-succeed personality like Gendo's.

In Shinji's mind, this woman wasn't just an amalgamation of people from his past…but someone who could either try to manipulate him if possible…or destroy him if he resisted.

"I can respect those that have what it takes to survive," she told him, and then threw him aside to turn her attention on Sheele. "Those that have the means to survive will undoubtably survive. Those that display weakness will lack the means to do so…and must be put down. Like this girl."

She took her sword and aimed its blade at Sheele's sternum.

Pierce! The blade struck flesh, but not Sheele's.

"Aaah!" Shinji groaned, getting Sheele out of the way and getting stabbed himself. "Aaurgh!"

He had shoved Sheele aside and felt like the blade went through his left lung and heart.

"You protected a weak person," Esdeath reacted, disgusted and impressed by Shinji's reaction; disgusted by his intervention, but impressed by his quick reflexes. "Tolerating the weak is a weakness. That cannot be tolerated."

He turned his head to face hers and responded, "Violence that causes death only results in further violence that will lead to death. You call it a weakness to protect someone you feel is weak? It's not a weakness. It's never a weakness to want to protect others. It's never a weakness to want to value life."

Esdeath jammed the sword deeper into his back and into the ground.

"Aaaurgh!" Shinji yelled, wondering why he hadn't done the obvious of his injury and die yet. "You think I'm weak, Esdeath?! Do you?! Do you think I'm weak?!"

Suddenly, Koro regenerated and got back up, changing into its monstrous form, surprising the other Night Raid members because it didn't have its core in its body. It slowly approached Shinji, Sheele and Esdeath, growling and extending its claws out.

"Sheele, run," Shinji pleaded the woman to get away, fearing for her safety.

Sheele tried to get up as fast as possible, but the biological Imperial Arm had gotten close enough to finish her off…and Extase was not within reaching distance of her arms to defend herself.

Bash! Koro, surprising everyone further, had struck Esdeath, sending her flying to the ground.

"Aaurgh!" She groaned, not expecting the biological Imperial Arm to do that to her…or anyone affiliated with the Jaegers, for that matter.

Rip! It then removed the sword from Shinji's body, allowing his injuries to regenerate.

-x-

Tatsumi, Akame, Leone and the others of Night Raid couldn't believe that a Jaeger's Imperial Arm had assaulted Esdeath and removed her sword from Shinji's body.

Even Sheele was amazed by this turn of events.

"Grrr!" Koro growled.

Shinji then got up and helped Sheele up.

"I need to borrow your scissors again," he told her, relieving her of Extase again and picking up Raze. "I'm taking your Imperial Arms for what they're worth! I'll show you who's weak!"

The Jaegers facing the other Night Raid assassins were thinking that this boy had lost it big time. If he thought he could take their Imperial Arms, he was nuts to think it was possible without killing them.

Koro followed behind Shinji, as if acting as a guardian of sorts.

This led Najenda to wonder…if Shinji was somehow controlling the organic Imperial Arm at that moment, which shouldn't have been possible because such Imperial Arms were trickier to control.

Shinji looked at Run and then Wave, seeing their Imperial Arms as just wings and armor, respectively, then raised up Extase in front of them…and broke the scissors in half! The flamethrower looked as though it had gotten smaller and was fused onto Shinji's left arm.

"Gaaaaurgh!" He yelled as he charged towards Wave.

"You're no match for my Grand Chariot!" Wave told him, confident that his Imperial Arm was stronger than this boy, even if he was wielding three of them at once.

Clash! The broken scissor blades impacted with the Jaeger's pole arm…and Wave was pushed back by the young man.

 _What power!_ Wave realized.

 _How am I doing this?_ Shinji wondered, never feeling such an intensity within him that was different from his previous experience with the Eva. _And how am I not afraid of the possibility of killing this guy? I don't want to kill any of them._

Suddenly, Wave's pole arm started to evaporate in front of him.

"Aaah!" He gasped, releasing what was left of his weapon and blocking his head and chest from the scissor blades that Shinji swung at him. "You are something else! Why settle for Night Raid? Why not join us and the Empire?"

"The Empire's become corrupted," Shinji expressed. "People killing each other for one reason or another. One Night Raider told me how a family that seemed so decent and caring went killed his two childhood friends just for fun. And that…that's just wrong. Now, I don't have a complete understanding of everything here that's twisted, but I have to accept what I see and hear for the rest of my life, and that's that this place, this kingdom ruled by a child ruler…isn't what it used to be because of factors beyond our control. Executions committed everyday to install fear of repercussions for trying to stand up to the cruelty and depravity, the wealthy hiding their secret torture habits and getting away with them, and now two sides fighting to change everything. To either maintain this chaotic order…or install a new order to replace the previous in hopes of ending the unrest that exists."

"And you honestly believe in Night Raid?"

"I… Yes. Yes, I believe in them…but I am not a killer. I won't kill you, any of you."

"Mercy's a weakness, boy."

Shinji's face seemed contorted between a desire to kill and a desire to be merciful, and his grip on the scissor blades tightened and forced Wave to drop to his left knee.

"I won't kill you," his voice sounded raspy and gruff, as if trying to be intimidating, "but I don't have to leave you unharmed."

The next thing Wave knew, he felt his Grand Chariot heat up and then evaporate, leaving him as he was before he acquired it!

"What?!" He gasped.

Shinji then swung the scissor blades at him, leaving deep cuts on his right arm and left leg that sent blood flying into the air.

The sword that served as Grand Chariot's key to unleashing its armor fell from Wave's possession, right in front of Shinji, who reformed the broken scissor blades whole and picked up the weapon.

"Next comes the winged one," he said, the sword glowing and enveloping him in the same armor that Wave wore, only tailored to his body now. "Whoa."

And with that, Shinji started to levitate off the ground and flew towards Run, leaving Koro to grab Wave…who was then thrown aside towards Esdeath.

"Urgh!" Wave groaned as he tried to get up, but his left leg was too injured from the cut Shinji made. "How was he able to do that? He just… He just took Grand Chariot from me."

-x-

The cloned body of the Third Child looked at Ritsuko as he was still strapped to the gurney. A short while ago, probably due to the original DNA that made out half his appearance, he saw a glimpse of the dead boy he was made to replace facing a guy in dark blue armor with a large pair of scissors with a panda head on them. It felt like a…brief-but-deep dream, or just a small connection with no true purpose other than to see what became of the boy's soul.

"The invasive…and the defensive," he then said, which caught Ritsuko's attention.

"What?" She responded. "What did you say?"

"Invasive…and defensive. The invasive defensive. One invades while one defends. The soul of the dead and displaced you can never reach for to pull back is in a conflict between retribution and redemption. Suffering and salvation…at the end of a bullet. Give suffering and salvation to everyone around you and wait to find out who deserves more."

Ritsuko was puzzled by his words. She knew Shinji had never been very talkative, so she had to suspect that the odd increase in vocabulary was due to the additional strands of DNA in his system affecting his altered brain chemistry.

His genetic manipulation made him clearly different from the First Child, but whether or not he could he managed was up to discussion with commander.

"He shall soon have wings with which to take flight," the clone uttered.

"What are you talking about?"

-x-

"…Urgh!" Run grunted as Shinji threw him to the ground, having been stripped of his Imperial Arm. "No way can you handle all those Imperial Arms."

Mastema, now in Shinji's possession with the Grand Chariot armor, manifested itself on his back, making him look like some sort of armored angel.

In the eyes of the remaining carriers of Imperial Arms, Shinji seemed almost invincible right now.

To be continued…

A/N: After a mild case of vertigo yesterday, this chapter has been finished. I hope you enjoy it until the next chapter.


	7. Facing the Bullet, Leading the Salvation

Creation began on 02-25-17

Creation ended on 04-05-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Facing the Bullet, Leading the Salvation

A/N: What is the point of having power if you can't truly save anyone with it?

It was unbelievable how Shinji Ikari had three Imperial Arms at his disposal right now. Five when you included Sheele's Extase and Shinji's own gun that couldn't kill a soul, no matter what he tried because he didn't have a killer instinct.

Shinji, decked out in the armor of Grand Chariot, looked at Kurome and her sword-based Imperial Arm, Yatsufusa…and then over at Esdeath, as if trying to choose whose Imperial Arm to take next. And he decided to lay waste to what was left of the Jaegers by taking Yatsufusa from Akame's sister. If he took that from her, the power of the Jaegers would be reduced to the power Esdeath possessed. The Jaegers would be unable to pose a heavy threat to Night Raid or the Revolutionary Army without their Imperial Arms.

"I want that sword," he told the young girl.

Kurome, having been unable continue her duel with Akame after watching Shinji take Koro from Seryu, felt that a person wielding so many different Imperial Arms was asking for trouble, but this kid that was with Night Raid, and he was standing as formidable any well-trained soldier in the Imperial Army was. There was no telling what he was capable of if he had taken Yatsufusa from her.

"You want my sword?" She asked him, raising it defensively in front of herself. "Try and take it from me!"

Shinji hovered towards her and Akame, looking at the elder sister.

"If you still feel you have to deal with her, Akame, can I ask you to wait until after she's been relieved of her sword?" He asked her, raising the scissor blades up.

Akame sighed and responded, "Just don't kill her."

"I wouldn't dare think of doing so."

He then hovered towards Kurome.

Slash! Yatsufusa clashed with one of the scissor blades.

"Aah!" Kurome gasped, never anticipating this boy would have strength comparable to that of a large animal. _What power!_

The armored boy had pushed her back and towards a large rock.

Slam! The impact wasn't enough to harm her, but it was enough to throw Kurome off balance for Shinji to quickly grab her left arm and relieved her of the sword before head-butting her.

If it was anything to be funny about, Kurome probably saw tiny birdies with her sister's head on them flying around her head before dropping to the ground.

Akame was stunned by Shinji's minor assault on her sister. Not even she would've ever thought to head-butt Kurome in any fight; it was just not how she was taught to take out her opponents.

Now, with the March of the Dead: Yatsufusa in his possession, any of the reanimated corpses under Kurome's control had fallen, unable to do anything other than decay as they had when they were killed. Shinji then looked over towards Esdeath and glared; she had an Imperial Arms…and he knew that if he took it from her, he would have taken all the Imperial Arms belonging to the Jaegers.

"You're the only one left, Esdeath," he told her, sounding almost like he was running out of steam. "You can take your comrades and run while you still have the chance to. There's no shame, no weakness, in running away. Live today…and live to fight another day."

"Only someone such as you would believe in there being no weakness in fleeing," she responded. "So long as one of us remains standing, the battle presses on."

"Look at your comrades, Esdeath. They're beaten, their Imperial Arms no longer in their possession, and you're outnumbered by individuals with Imperial Arms. I'm aware of the belief that those with Imperial Arms are doomed to die in conflict, but I'm changing that right now. Don't make me cross a line that will do nothing but tarnish my soul."

Esdeath looked at her fallen Jaegers and then at the members of Night Raid that still stood. It seemed that while she was still stronger than any of them put together, Night Raid still had the advantage of their numbers, and with this Shinji now armed with so many Imperial Arms, they were a formidable threat to her for the time.

 _And he really thinks he can take Demon's Extract from me?_ She thought, giving into being impressed by the boy's power and disgusted by his unyielding mercy. _Probably out of the entire Revolutionary Army, this boy may be the greatest threat to the Empire. Yet, I must praise him for his power._

She backed away from Najenda and conjured walls of thick ice, separating them and her comrades from those of Night Raid, allowing them to get away.

"I will not forget this, boy," she told him.

"Shinji," he responded, the face-guard of Grand Chariot retracting to reveal his face to her. "My name is Shinji Ikari. The Bullet of Salvation…and I want to live up to that designation."

"Bullet of Salvation: Shinji Ikari, hmm? I look forward to meeting you again."

And then, each of the Jaegers fell back (Wave had to pick up Kurome and carry her away), leaving Night Raid to revel in the spoils of Shinji's success.

"Urgh!" Shinji grunted as he felt the sense of fatigue about to overwhelm him.

He fell to his left knee and looked at Sheele as the armor evaporated around him and the sword key fell to the ground in front of him.

"Nobody…nobody else died today," he uttered. "Nobody else should have to."

He then passed out on the ground, surrounded by the Imperial Arms he had taken from the Jaegers and Sheele's Extase.

-x-

"…He could've killed us after taking our Imperial Arms," went Bols as he and the Jaegers walked back to the Empire, referring to the fact that a young boy had beaten them instead of a group of assassins, "but he let us go."

"Even when we were deprived of our weapons," added Seryu in anger, "he allowed us to lick our wounds. This is a disgrace to the very order of justice!"

"My sword," Kurome expressed, pissed off at having her Yatsufusa taken from her by a boy they hadn't seen until today. "I can't believe he actually took my sword. I underestimated what he was capable of."

"We all underestimated him," said Run. "If he was one of us, we'd likely have the Revolutionary Army on the run to extinction with the power he has. But he's with them. Night Raid! The only one most likely to have a chance at surviving against him is Esdeath herself."

Esdeath heard that and wouldn't have minded fighting Shinji. His designation intrigued her, what he was capable of impressed her, his…devotion to protecting those that couldn't even protect themselves…disgusted her. Still, if he could be turned, if he could be swayed to the needs of the Empire, to turn against the Revolutionary Army, then going after him would be worth this defeat that the boy handed them. And if she could sway him to her side, she would probably be immortalized throughout the Empire's history as the one that acquired the most powerful of individuals that could manipulate several Imperial Arms at once.

 _That woman he kept me from attacking,_ she thought, referring to Sheele, whom she couldn't stop wondering on why Shinji would keep her out of harm's way. _If there's something beyond being involved with the same group that binds the two, I must find a way to sever it._

-x-

Shinji awoke, finding himself back at the Night Raid base, laying in front of Sheele, who was stirring something in a cup.

"Sheele?" He asked, getting her attention. "How long was I out?"

"Three days," she answered, removing the spoon from the cup and handing it over to him. "You had us all worried after you passed out."

It was mostly water with some sort of seltzer mix in it, and Shinji felt hydrated after drinking it.

"Are you alright?" She asked him, concerned for his welfare after seeing him possess so many Imperial Arms. "You shouldn't have been able to wield that many Imperial Arms, and yet you did. You were…the most amazing wielder of Imperial Arms we had ever seen."

He slowly got up and stood in front of her, stretching his limbs to straighten out his joints.

"It felt like a heavy hit, having so many of them in my possession. All that power, all those options…but I was getting exhausted faster. It took all that I had left in me to get Esdeath to retreat and take her Jaegers with her."

"We were lucky she did when she did. You single-handedly dispatched the entire Jaegers, excluding Esdeath…without killing them. Najenda commended you for obtaining their Imperial Arms, though she was curious if you were capable of taking Esdeath's."

Cracking his neck joints, Shinji asked, "What is her Imperial Arms?"

-x-

"…You're sure about this, Bulat?" Tatsumi asked him as he handed over the sword to Incursio. "I could take Grand Chariot."

"No, you wouldn't be able to use it," Bulat told him. "One's compatibility with an Imperial Arms depends on their first impression of it. How Shinji was able to use so many, we might not know for sure, but I know I can use Grand Chariot the same way I used Incursio. Please, take it."

Tatsumi then accepted the sword to Incursio and replaced his regular sword in his scabbard with it. Now, he had an Imperial Arms of his own.

"We owe Shinji a lot for his acquisition of these relics," said Mine to them, picking up the flamethrower Bols had. "Person or not, Imperial Arms or not, that kid's got potential like you do, Tatsumi. Maybe he won't cross the line and kill someone, even to save someone else, but you gotta admire his abilities. There's no denying his credibility. Bullet of Salvation's more than an accurate way to designate him."

Akame nodded in agreement with her as she looked down at Yatsufusa. Unless her sister had a sword that was just as powerful as this or as dangerous as Murasume, there was no way that Kurome stood a chance against her. She owed Shinji for tipping the odds in her favor as well as the favor of the Revolutionary Army.

"Look who's finally awake, everyone," they all heard Sheele as she came into the large room where the Jaegers' Imperial Arms were held on display, seeing Shinji with her, rested.

"How do you feel?" Akame asked him.

"In need of information on an Imperial Arms called…Demon's Extract," he answered her.

"Esdeath's Imperial Arms," said Najenda to him. "Quite possibly the strongest of the Imperial Arms ever made one-thousand years ago."

She handed Shinji a book and opened it to a page that showed a picture of a large, golden chalice with handles.

"This is Demon's Extract?" He questioned her. "I don't follow. It's just a chalice."

"Demon God Manifestation: Demon's Extract isn't a chalice, Shinji," she explained to him. "The chalice held what was in it before Esdeath got it. It's an elemental power in the form of blood harvested from an S-Class Danger Beast that lived in the farthest parts of the Empire's northern regions. Once consumed, Demon's Extract gives the user the ability to manipulate ice, especially without a water source. But the side-effect of consuming the blood is that you hear voices to the point of insanity. Esdeath was the only person in the Empire's history to gain complete mastery over Demon's Extract. Her will was likely strong enough to overcome the voices of insanity…or she was insane enough to not be bothered by the voices and operate sanely."

"But…if the Imperial Arm's just a blood substance that gives you power over ice…and it needs to be ingested, consumed…"

"That's right, Shinji. Taking it like you did with the others' Imperial Arms may not be easy, even for you."

"Except he won't know," went Lubbock, "until he tries."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence," Shinji praised him.

"Hey, to the guy that was strong enough to take and use at least seven Imperial Arms at once," added Leone, "who says you can't take Esdeath's Demon's Extract?"

-x-

"…So, each of your Jaegers were defeated by Night Raid?" Honest questioned Esdeath, who reported the failed mission to him and the Emperor the next day upon returning to the Empire. "Each member with an Imperial Arms at their disposal…and you were defeated by a small band of assassins?"

"Not Night Raid in general," she clarified, "but the mysterious boy that appeared the night Seryu had almost disposed of one of them with her Imperial Arms. He called himself the Bullet of Salvation: Shinji Ikari."

The Emperor's eyes widened as he uttered in response to the identity of the mysterious boy, "The Bullet of Salvation: Shinji Ikari? Are you sure that's how he identified himself?"

"Yes, Emperor," she confirmed. "You've heard of him before?"

"He's supposed to be a myth, as old as the Empire was at the time the Imperial Arms were made," said Honest, having read the story of such a boy. "An outcast of the Empire made from the leftovers of Danger Beasts in an experiment to try and bring the deceased back to life. Not an Imperial Arms in the common sense, but far from human…and less than a living dead. A ridiculous tale."

"I saw him and what he could do, Prime Minister Honest," Esdeath informed him. "He was no ridiculous tale. He took my Jaegers' Imperial Arms without killing them. People that wield Imperial Arms are doomed to die in conflict, yet he took them away, one after another."

"If I remember an article of him from an old tome I read once," the Emperor expressed, "my ancestor stated in his last entry detailing the Bullet of Salvation, _'Whosoever has the Bullet of Salvation is destined to achieve the impossible, to break the unbreakable and conquer the unconquerable'_. If the Revolutionary Army truly has him on their side, then they will have the power to take the Empire without fail."

Honest didn't like this! His hold on the Empire was now threatened by the would-be myth of a strange creature that used to be human brought back from the past. If this…Bullet of Salvation was truly in the possession of Night Raid and the Revolutionary Army, then the Empire's days were at an end.

"But that's whosoever has him," he heard Esdeath say to them. "This means that it's possible that he can be taken, controlled, even manipulated to serve a greater order, right?"

"Yes, it's possible," answered the Emperor to her. "But if anything, General Esdeath, this young man… Well, this ancient, young man…may not be all that different from you if he is who he claims to be."

"Permission to question what you mean by that, my Emperor?"

"As potentially strong and powerful as the Bullet of Salvation is, he is still a person before he is a relic, still bound by the same thoughts and feelings as anyone else is. Whether he seeks greater power than what he likely has already…or even a life outside of conflict with friends, it is entirely up to his sense of judgment."

This had Esdeath intrigued in a different way than how she was originally intrigued by Shinji. If he was no different from other people, he was able to be seduced by the desire for more than simple things…and she needed to find a way to sway him to her side.

-x-

Shinji flexed his right hand a few times as he sat on the top of Night Raid's secondary headquarters, pondering a way to relieve Esdeath of her Imperial Arms. If he could take it from her and deprive her of her ice powers, she would be no stronger than she was prior to obtaining it and becoming such a threat.

"Are you doing okay, Shinji?" He heard Sheele behind him, and turned to face her.

"Uh, yeah," he answered her; he didn't say it, but he was relieved that she was still alive after the unexpected battle. "How are you?"

"Good," she answered him, and sat next to him on his left side. "I didn't say this before, but thank you."

"Hmm? What for?" He asked again, confused.

"You saved me from Esdeath's attack that day," she reminded him.

"Oh," he realized, reminded that he did take an ice spear to his back for her. "You're welcome. Take one for the team, right?"

"Yes. But I didn't expect you would survive such an assault to your body like that. I actually thought you could die from being impaled by her. What were you thinking?"

Sheele was good at killing, she wouldn't deny that, but just being able to ask Shinji things as direct as what she was asking him now was difficult. Something Akame had picked up on when Mine told her to go talk to him.

"My thought was… I couldn't let a woman with ice water in her veins hurt this woman I was helping to be more than just a skilled assassin. If anything happens to even just one of Night Raid's members I've met since I arrived…then everyone else would be consumed by sadness. It's probably not in the profession of an assassin to have ties to people beyond contacts and resources in the business of taking out selected targets, but not all assassins are like that, right? We're not like machines that follow instructions without a sense of deviation. Even a killer can choose not to kill someone…even if they did do something to deserve death. If Esdeath had killed one of you, how would your absence affect the rest of the group? How would it affect all or one? I didn't want to know how it might've gone down. I haven't been here long, but from my experience in my previous existence, newbies are often always the most expendable."

Then, possibly by impulse, Sheele placed her right hand on his left hand.

"You're not expendable, Shinji," she told him. "Swords and shields are expendable. Suits of armor can be replaced…but good people like you can't be replaced. Even if you're capable of healing faster or you have some ability that allows you to use multiple relics without killing those that have them, you're still as vulnerable as any of us are. And…you're not a newbie, anymore. You're one of us now. You may not have a drive to kill anyone, but you're a member of Night Raid. An assassin…that doesn't assassinate."

He set his right hand down on the grass and nodded in the positive at her.

"I can't be the only person of that sort within the Revolutionary Army," he expressed, trying to be serious about his status.

"Actually, you are," she told him.

"Oh."

-x-

"…For this new mission, we'll be strictly reconnaissance," said Esdeath to her crew, now armed with regular weapons due to their incompatibility with the Empire's remaining Imperial Arms. "And should you see any of Night Raid or Shinji, use smoke and pepper bombs. Do not engage. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," they responded, following her down the road to where they last encountered Night Raid.

For now, reconnaissance was all the Jaegers could do…but not all that Esdeath could do, being the only one with an Imperial Arms still in her possession. If they encountered Night Raid or Shinji, their orders were to not engage, but she didn't have to obey her own order.

She wanted the boy by her side. If she could sway him, then the Empire would be able to destroy the Revolutionary Army…and maybe he could fill the gap in her heart that she had been looking to fill for some time now.

 _A powerful young man, however ancient, deserves only an equally-powerful woman at his side,_ she thought, imagining Shinji on the ground, being dragged away back to the Empire by her to be reconditioned.

-x-

"…Either he's mentally unstable as a result of the altered brain chemistry," went Ritsuko to Gendo as the faux-blond brought him into the chamber where the cloned Third Child resided, "or he's somehow able to connect with the Third Child's soul wherever it's displaced. The last thing he spoke of was that he would soon have wings and take flight."

"The dead that ascend to Heaven obtain wings and become angels," Gendo stated, believing that the clone was simply unstable.

Now housed in the tube that was usually occupied by the First Child, the cloned boy was looking at them with half-open eyes.

"I had to sedate him before he could be put in the tube," Ritsuko explained to him. "He could still speak, but he's suddenly not as talkative as he was earlier."

"Has he said anything beyond the last thing he spoke of?" Gendo questioned.

"If he did, it would've been recorded."

Gendo stood in front the clone and spoke, "What do you see of the Third Child?"

Slowly raising his head, the clone responded, "With his loyalty to these raiders of the night, granting them a number of the lost treasures of a kingdom as great as the fabled Atlantis once was, he who accepts his position as a member of a band of killers…with no intention of ever killing anyone, whether they're good or bad…and seeks only the path of least harm."

"He joined up with a group of assassins…but has no intention of being a killer?" Ritsuko questioned the clone.

"To find salvation, one must traverse through a marsh of violence and carefully navigate the tortures of life to find that which brings joy to the soul brought back…when a choice to either return to a previous state or stay with the next step of your journey to see where it takes you is given and decided upon."

The words made Gendo suspect that, in some strange way, the Third Child's soul had been presented with the option to return to this world…only to be rejected in favor of something else that promised salvation for his soul. This probably explained why they failed to bring to life a basic clone of the boy; if they had been trying to recall a soul that had accepted that it had died once before, then it was difficult to almost impossible to bring the soul back in a false body that was one step removed from natural life.

"…Sheele…" The clone uttered.

"What?" Gendo demanded.

"Sometimes, a step leading towards redemption…begins with a friend. In the end, a soul that is lost in the darkness will desire the comfort of another."

-x-

Tatsumi was surprised to find Shinji with Akame's Murasame the next day; it wasn't everyday that he saw a young man that could wield multiple Imperial Arms with one that didn't belong to him.

"Shinji, what are you doing with Akame's sword?" He asked.

"I offered to clean it for her," Shinji explained; since he couldn't be affected by the sword's ability to kill instantly, he volunteered to clean the blade that was difficult to clean without harming yourself. "She mentioned that this sword was difficult to clean without gloves and such. Hey, who better to handle such a task than one that can't be harmed by it, right?"

Shinji unsheathed the blade and held it upward, showing the results of his cleaning.

"Wow, Shinji, I don't think I've ever seen a sword as clean as Murasame before in my life," Tatsumi praised him.

"Thank you," Shinji responded, and re-sheathed the sword to go return it to Akame.

As Tatsumi walked down the hall, he saw Sheele walk out of Shinji's room.

"Hmm?" He uttered, wondering what was she doing in there. "Sheele?"

"Tatsumi?" She went, not noticing him. "Good morning."

"Good morning. Uh, what…what were you doing in Shinji's room?"

"Nothing, nothing."

But something in Tatsumi made him suspect that the purple-haired woman was lying to him. Whatever her reason for being in Shinji's room, he was sure to find out sooner or later.

To be continued…

A/N: I'm hoping to get more into this crossover story later on. Peace out.


End file.
